XTouch Mini MIDI Controller

[Bravo020]

Just to share something that I've been working on.  I'm a big fan of the XTouch Mini MIDI controller, and I've been leveraging it in conjunction with Bome MIDI Translator Pro, this s/w is a programmable interface for MIDI controllers.

Cut a long story short, it allows me to map the MIDI controller to keyboard mappings for use with DCS.

The following are a couple of layers that I've been working on, and I hope to get this wrapped up sometime soon.  The goal is to get most of the functionality available and in combination with HOTAS bindings avoid using the keyboard altogether.

The idea is that the left most 2 buttons (1 and 9) are reserved.  Button 1 can shift between 3 modes, and can either be accessed via the button itself (Off, On, Blinking), and a different set of mappings are available for each mode.  The behaviour can also be performed by a HOTAS binding as well.  Also with this setup, you also have 2 layers, A and B and again you can switch between shift modes and layers and the buttons lights are remembered between each layer and mode.

There are 8 encoders (dials) and those are assigned to different tasks, and the encoders can also be clicked to mimic push/hold/release/toggle etc.  Also for some setups I've also added additional buttons to select other systems, for example one button can switch between TACACS and UHF, and another can switch between lights etc.

Further programming is used for some situations, for example, 3 buttons are used for SLATS/FLAPS, and if one option is selected then the others are deactivated and vice versa.

Button 9 is dedicated to integrating with the Jester UI, open it, navigate via encoder 1, select items, etc., and again this is common across any of the shift modes and layers selected.

Anyway, something that I've been looking at recently and thought I'd share it with the folks here, and always keen to hear of anyone else using MIDI controllers with DCS.

Thanks.

[Costas_Ch]

Hi @Bravo020,

I have just purchased X-Touch Mini and I am trying to figure out how to use it. I came up with the Midikey2key (https://midikey2key.de/).

Do you have a different software to suggest? Do you develop an alternative? 

Do you have any good source of info to provide as to be honest, this doesn't work as I would expect (probably my ignorance on midis)

Any suggestion will be more than welcomed.

Thank you in advance.

[Bravo020]

On 12/8/2024 at 9:12 PM, Costas_Ch said:

Hi @Bravo020,

I have just purchased X-Touch Mini and I am trying to figure out how to use it. I came up with the Midikey2key (https://midikey2key.de/).

Do you have a different software to suggest? Do you develop an alternative? 

Do you have any good source of info to provide as to be honest, this doesn't work as I would expect (probably my ignorance on midis)

Any suggestion will be more than welcomed.

Thank you in advance.

I'm not using Midikey2, I am using Bome Midi Translator Pro, I bought this quite some time ago, taking a look at their website, it is available for €59 (https://www.bome.com/products/miditranslator)  There is a trial version that only runs for max of 20mins before it has to be restarted, certainly a way to figure out if you want to proceed with it or not.

Now, it is a programming interface, and not always the most intuitive if I'm totally honest, but once you get over that hurdle, and understand the nuances of the interface, the programming capabilities I've found it very useful.

Programming it takes a long time for use with DCS, because there are just so many key combos to handle and you need to think about how you'd like the layout to be defined and how the buttons should behave etc.

But I've found it very useful with DCS so far, and you can make your own overlays or buy overlays that you can customise etc.

Of course BOME doesn't just have to handle this midi device, and will handle any midi device, and you can create your own profiles for different games, or s/w.  I use mine with both Photoshop and Davinci Resolve for example.

[Pyrocumulous]

There's considerable number of ways to get keystrokes and axes inputs from MIDI devices. I think one of the more useful is the midi2vjoy python scripts which pass button pushes and axes values onto vJoy (BrunnerInnovation build for Windows 11). Of the numerous midi2vjoy scripts, I found midi2vjoy-again (by luppahannu) to be the most useful due the numerous options that can be configured.